


ask me your question (and give me your answer)

by thumbipeach



Category: Purple Hyacinth (Webcomic)
Genre: ANGST THERES TONS OF IT, ANOTHER post s1/s2 fic???, Angst, Enemies to Lovers, Enemies to Partners to Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Flower Symbolism, Fluff, Fools, Hit Me Baby One More Time, Hurt/Comfort, It’s like you have nothing else better to do!, Just barely this time, Kieran is a simp, Making Out, SIMP!Kieran, Slow Burn, Violence, a bullet, but I find a way, but with like, fool - Freeform, guess who’s the queen of the fools though, haha - Freeform, he’s also vv sad, i love you all so much but I need someone to cry, imagine me keyboard smashing and that’s this fic, lauren is pissed off, nothing constructive happens here, season 1/season 2, wow what do we have here peachie, yeah that happens!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:55:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25056556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thumbipeach/pseuds/thumbipeach
Summary: —He takes to the stage every night, hoping for a partner.—On the hour of the devil, she gives him her answer. Cuts her palm to spill the blood upon the pavement.
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White
Comments: 14
Kudos: 90





	ask me your question (and give me your answer)

**Author's Note:**

> Songs:
> 
> ‘Rendezvous’ by Miss Benny  
> ‘My Oh My’ by Camilla Cabello  
> ‘Dancing on Glass’ by St. Lucia

_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

_/_

She is fifteen when she first hears his name.

She is in a courtyard of bullets and targets, fellow trainees by her side as she dons plastic goggles and shoots, fires shot after shot after shot into a wooden thing that she visualizes as so much more.

Then Will nudges her to stop the ricochet of gunfire, for the sounds around her have dwindled into nothing, until she is the only one still shooting, every cadet in the range staring at the lone woman—girl—pulling, pulling, pulling her trigger.

She unclips her headphones and looks a question, but Will gestures hurriedly to the door, where an officer has come in panting, pale, white crawling up his neck and cheeks.

_“Sir.”_ He cries, and it is frantic, enough for panic to set in Lauren’s veins. Another—

“What? What is it—?” The then Captain Tristan surges, catches him by the wrist and pulls him upward. 

What is it indeed? It is a murder, a hanging by crystals and glass houses. It is blood pooling underneath a strung up ornament, a once living thing, now dead. 

“But what’s so—“

The officer holds up a plastic bag.

Inside is a small purple flower covered in red.

It’s not what they’re expecting. It wasn’t what _she_ was expecting, and she doesn’t know it now, but this isn’t the last time the devil will subvert her impressions.

They name him, baptize his creed. He is the Purple Hyacinth, the flower he chose to codify his intentions.

That is the introduction. 

The trumpets sound.

———

He is seventeen when he kills first.

Contrary to public knowledge it is not, in fact, the hanging by chandelier, the death by crystal.

No, it is in a little dungeon, a person that does not matter, a cloth pulled over his screaming lips and fretful eyes, so that the devil may not give name, emotion to the intended target. 

His face is supposed to be immemorable, but the pits of the man’s sockets and desperate claw of his wrists are forever burned into his mind, a branding made with a blacksmith’s iron.

He rakes a hand through his hair, black as night and ruffled as morning sheets, and smears blood into the commissure of sweat and fear.

“You have done well.”

He turns to find the sentencer, the judge, staring him down. The man who’d told him to do this, and he’d followed suit. His own visage is hidden by a mask with a curving beak, and the robe catches no dust as it sways to the rhythm of an unsteady drum.

“Come.”

He beckons him with a lone finger, out the door and into the light. They expect him to not look back, to walk forward with timed steps and perhaps a laugh, if he is up for the revelry of ending a life.

But he is, in fact, still human; they have not managed to beat it out of him yet. 

His eyes will always come back to the body in the chair, figure slumped in bloody death, like a moth to the flame that will scorch it. He stares it down and wishes he could feel nothing like they want him to.

Maybe it’ll make it easier, if he is numb.

And thus, the devil springs.

/

_I do not wish to._

  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

_/_

She is nineteen when he does the irreparable.

The street he has chosen to sully with lethal rust swims beneath her feet as she trudges on, and on, and on, Allendale flooding back as she picks her way through grime and gore. Still onward, towards where her friends are standing, clicking their tongues.

“This is horrid.” Kym near whispers, fear in her face. Lauren nods.

“Hyacinths—they’re everywhere.” Will near spits, disdain in his eyes. Lauren nods again.

What else can she do?

He has painted a canvas, like an artist to his own. He has picked the colors—red, crimson, scarlet, and she finds it is an eerily beautiful thing, the street washed with blood and done up in monochrome.

It does not abate the bile in her throat, the dull loathing that forms. 

It’s not personal; it won’t be for a while.

But it is there nonetheless; the devil acknowledged, seen, known.

She can say proudly that she hates him. Hates the idea of him, as she hates all murderers.

What a hate that is, for one she cannot see.

———

He is twenty-one when he does the irreparable.

He doesn’t choose his victims; that is up to the one above whom he cannot know, cannot see or walk beside. But he still follows the list to the boot, knives slashing and his heart stopped. It doesn’t beat anymore; it doesn’t beat to his own accord, anyhow.

When it’s over, he finds himself in an alleyway, a random one with no name where he can weep. And weep he does, the fallen angel, cowers like a dog in the gutters, rain lapping at his heels and eroding the rust upon them. 

“You’re here, Hyacinth.”

He looks up to find a Messenger, pristine white mask and square shoulders.

He tries to croak out a reply, but nothing comes out.

“Are you saddened, Kieran?”

Again, no reply. They’ve used his name.

“Don’t be. You know what this is for.”

He does. He does. But isn’t it funny, how even then he pours his hate not towards the doctor by his bedside, the angel by his crown, the master of the puppet show, but towards himself?

He, who has been made a devil by hands not known to him.

“I do,” he acquiesces.

“Then get up.”

The Messenger doesn’t lend him a hand, merely walking away after seeing that he’s risen, blood clotted around his fingertips.

He brings himself up. He cauterizes his own wounds. He inflicts his own pain. He bandages himself, when the light wanes and the stars are stuck up in the sky with bits of waning plaster.

As he will, until he meets his other.

/

_I would hate to do that._

  
  
  
  


_//_

  
  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

/

She is twenty-two when she meets him first.

She’d thought of the devil as someone who looked the part. A being who embodied shadow and death, red and black and searing, unyielding yellow. When her parents warned her of demons at night, to ward her off into a fitful sleep void of curiosity, that picture is what she would imagine.

She doesn’t understand what she sees: the torn coat, white sleeves. Raven’s feathers and stormy blue. A grin as wide as hers had once been.

They stare each other down for what feels like hours, two tigers caught in a deadly gap in time. Then, she rounds on him, kicking him to the floor like he’d nearly done for her.

She is a businesswoman; she gives back to him everything he gave to her, with interest befitting a king.

“You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say here can and will be used in a court of law.”

He laughs, a harsh thing, stone scraping stone and coming straight from the depths of his chest. It surprises her, throws her off; it’s too real, too unlike a spectre, a thing of the depths.

It’s almost human.

“Don’t even bother, daring. I’ll be gone before you finish reading me my rights.”

They move on and on and on, back and forth, give and take. And then something in her eyes must gleam, something must call to him like it did when he kicked her mask off and all her inhibitions with it, for he pauses and looks askance.

“You’re the same as me.”

_“What—?”_

And the devil smiles.

“Willing to do whatever it takes.”

———

He is twenty-four when he meets her first.

He’d noticed her before, the strong stance and vice grip of the fierce woman in the coffee shop who took no prisoners but her own heart. He’d recognized something in that; the call of another devil, a match to a flame. But he didn’t quite register it until she’d caught up to him later, and he could truly see the depth in her eyes, the desire for something beyond his knowledge.

All humans have that: the burning need for things they cannot get without help. Some are just too blind to realize it, too shrouded in their sense of self to recognize that they are all susceptible, that they can all be swayed by devils, not just those who are foolish.

“You’re willing to do whatever it takes.”

“I am _not.”_ She snarls, her knee moving further, gun pressing closer. He lets a harsh laugh loose, the thing escaping him like a dog caught in a kennel. 

“You _are,_ officer. I can see it, I know.”

“You know _nothing_ of me, monster.”

It should stop him, hurt him, cut him—but it doesn’t, not yet. He doesn’t let it, doesn’t allow the veneer to slip, fall off of him like a sheer covering of silk until there is nothing much left of him to hide.

No, he has armor, yet.

“I may be a monster—but aren’t you just as bad as me, darling?”

He looks back, back just far enough to catch it. That fleeting moment where she lets down her own armor, and he can see the utter determination, unhealthy hatred and vow for vengeance set in glimmering topaz, hard gemstones that shine like beacons in the stale night.

He rises to it, a magpie drawn to the glint of silver. He turns the tables, kicks her over and forces her eyes to meet his, and yet he is the one who must hide his stunted breath.

“I’ll strike you a deal.” The devil says, hands on her thighs and weapon teasing her neck. She huffs in irritation, in passionate loathing.

“A deal with _you?_ Hardly.”

“Ah. But—“ and he rises, black cloak swaying, preparing to delve into the shadows once more—

“You will. Everyone does, eventually.”

The devil walks away with light trailing behind him.

Later he sits in his apartment, chair worn with the weight of his sins as he strikes a canvas with paint. 

Red. Black. Yellow. The blue of a police coat.

The colors of demons.

/

_I wouldn’t dare. But I have met him before._

_He is not company I would want to keep._

  
  
  


//

  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

/

She is twenty-two, only a night younger, when she makes a deal with the devil.

The moon hangs between them, acting as a barrier, a divide, between two people on a chessboard, the white and black pieces at war.

“So. The good little cop decided to make a deal with me, hm?”

She grits her teeth, points her gun. It’s a charade, perfectly described in littering type, printed lettering. She could almost visualize it, then—the fall from grace.

“I _told_ you—everyone does, eventually.” He is all smirks, cocksure and arrogant, teeth slicing the moon through like a paring knife to a pomegranate. She won’t take his bait.

“You’re the Purple Hyacinth.”

He nods, accepting. “And of you?” He grins, sharp and searching. “What is your little blight, officer dearest?”

She grits her teeth. She won’t take it—she vows.

She won’t entertain demons.

“You and I have the same disposition—the same goal.” He drops in front of her, coat fanning around him like a cape. She scoffs.

“Is that so?”

“ _Yes,”_ and when he turns to her his expression is made new with some form of sorrow, something new she must learn to reconcile with. 

“—would you like to help me, officer?”

It’s an imploring plea, almost—she is surprised once more. That instead of demanding things from her, he offers to work with her as his equal, on the same level.

She considers, deliberates. The clock in the distance chimes, midnight, an hour past, soon to be three. 

On the hour of the devil, she gives him her answer. Cuts her palm to spill the blood upon the pavement. 

“We have a deal.”

He smiles. It’s too warm.

“ _Wonderful.”_

And she is twenty-two when she learns the devil’s name.

“Kieran White.”

“Nice to meet you.”

———

He is twenty-four, only a night older, when he approaches the angel to make his plea.

But he doesn’t make it seem so—like he is asking something of her that can have no nameable price. He takes the upper hand, takes everything before he begrudgingly gives.

“You seem to have this...knack for telling when other people lie.”

It’s an ability he both covets and pities—and he can see that it weighs on her, too. Perhaps, he reconciles, that’s why he’s trying to drag her down with him—out of some form of sympathy.

“Would you like to help me, officer?”

Her pretty face turns up, nose scrunching in contemplation and eyes still blazing with hatred.

“I have my own terms, if you would care to hear them.”

“Oh?”

He does hear them. They are reasonable enough.

And so, in the spotlight cast by the omniscient moon overhead, he makes their deal. Extends a bloody palm to her, red washing the pavement below, seeping into the river and dying it the color of fire.

He takes her hand in his, more gentle than he has ever touched anyone before, and forever ties her soul to his. It’s not a bargain—it’s not a deal.

It’s a promise.

“We have a deal.”

“Okay.”

And he is twenty-four when he learns the angel’s name.

“Lauren Sinclair.”

“A pleasure, darling.”

/

_I made a deal with him._

_Perhaps that was foolish of me._

  
  
  


//

  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

  
  


She is twenty-two when she first takes his hand to their stage.

He offers her his palm in an alleyway, except this time it is turned upwards, and she can see the gentle slope of his fingers as he presents them to her on a hand gloved in ivory. 

He asks her his question.

There is a pool of anxiety in her chest already, from the thrill of infiltration, from the dread that she anticipates from flitting amongst those she has sworn to destroy--arm in arm with one she should have already.

But for some reason—when Kieran speaks to her this way—there is something calming in it.

She supposes that all devils have that—that innate charm, the charisma that leads moths to their inevitable death by fire.

She’ll see through it. She’s smart.

Even as she takes his hand in answer, she keeps her guard up, even a little.

She knows better.

———

He is twenty-four when he first offers himself to her.

It’s not anything too important—he is merely taken aback when she meets him as an equal, light for light and dark for dark, toe to toe and eyes still blazing. They never stop, he notes, the fire in them never dulled.

He holds the words on his tongue, swaps them out for masks, shields, things that don’t bely anything but bitter detachment.

Then, she pulls back her hood, reveals the sloping curve of the cardinal-red silk she wears, all gold and black and red, red, red, and he considers her for the first time, _really_ looks at his new partner in crime, not just the figure he finds himself attempting in pencil and paint.

She gives him an answer, taking his hand and walking into the fray with him, delving into the den of swirling foxes. And he does know better than this, surely.

But something tugs him into the blinding heat again.

/

_I do hope he is a fine dancer._

_//_

  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

/

She is twenty-two still, when she enters the devil’s domain. 

His real one, the one where he is laid bare with no targets on walls, swords upon mantles and sheets of paper with people marked with knives, stray trees swaying in the wind.

“You can take the bed.”

He shuts the medical kit with a soft click, eyes downcast so she can’t see the dark blue of the torrential ocean in them. She stares.

“What, are you deaf?” Kieran smiles. “Go! I’ll take care of things for you.”

Lauren finds herself returning it. “Thank you.”

He shakes his head. “Think nothing of it.”

She does, though, well into the night. She lies in his bed amongst clean sheets of goose-feather, trying hard to get what she’s just done out of her head.

She’d taken his hand; she’d been held by him.

The clock strikes one, then two, then a third.

She’s allowed herself a weakness.

———

He is twenty-four still, when he lets someone into his domain. 

Kieran sits by the cool grey of the light, furiously scrubbing at bloodstains that, for once, are not his own.

He grits his teeth and catches the cloth in his fingers, looking down at it with a mild scorn that he cannot find in himself to truly feel.

When was the last time he’d allowed someone in here?

When was the last time he’d allowed _himself_ in here, to truly live like a normal person amongst wooden floorboards and hanging lamplight, sheets of paper with charcoal marks the only things of his creation, instead of lacerations and purple blossoms?

The clock strikes one, two, his strongest hour last. It doesn’t feel any better, he finds.

He turns to the window, attempting to find an answer.

She’s in the room next, and cannot give him what he needs for that.

/

_I haven’t yet judged—but I do feel he is an adequate dancer._

  
  


//

  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

/

She is twenty-two, marked, scarred, when she learns that, once again, he has done the irreparable.

“The Purple Hyacinth—“ Kym bleats out like a startled lamb, thrusting the newspaper into Lauren’s fingers. She pales.

Will shakes his head. “Look at what he’s gone and done—that _devil.”_

Lauren reads the print, the black and white blurring into grey behind pounding static. Even as the glint of a crown shines through the sun above, and male voices begin to permeate the suffocating crowd, she still doesn’t feel anything, only clutching at the thin paper in her hands and trying to keep the rest of herself together too.

So.

He’s played his game.

And she won’t go down without a fight.

———

He is twenty-four, pained, broken, when he, once again, does the irreparable.

He moves like lightning, a swift panther in a place he is forbidden. With each slice, with each muffled curse and scream and splatter of red paint, he is reminded why they call him what they do. Why he is what he is, and always will be.

He bursts into his cave with a staggering force, pushing his shaking hands underneath cold, icy water. He scrubs and scrubs and scrubs, nails digging into veins and fingers clawing at his heart, a thing that does not beat to his own rhythm anymore. Still, he cannot get it off. The red remains.

He growls, grits his teeth so hard he can hear them clack, loud in the silent recess. 

He thinks of her, then—it comes unbidden, a roll of film in his mind that someone keeps playing over, and over and over again. Her hair, crimson as the dawn, eyes still striking a match with every beat that they meet his.

He knows what he’s done.

He’s played the game he hates. 

And then he feels her; the click of her heels, blunt in anger, the sway of her coat and the way she comes into his life and drowns him in things he didn’t know he wanted.

He knows when she’s close.

He shouldn’t.

/

_I’d thought he was a fine dancer._

_Guess I was wrong._

  
  
  


_//_

  
  
  


_Have you ever—_

_/_

He crushes her neck.

He crushes something else, too, but neither of them will admit it.

They are both prideful things--they’ll go down with bones still in their closets.

/

**_No._ **

  
  
  


_//_

  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

_/_

She is twenty-two, bruises on her throat and in her heart, when the devil’s eyes turn to meet hers, in her sanctuary.

Everything stops.

No; that’s a lie. 

That’s a lie—because nothing stops. The world keeps turning, spinning with nauseous clarity, her colleagues keep talking, papers shuffling and boots scuffing, her friends keep breathing, happy smiles and genuine warmth, all while she stares her enemy in the face. 

Her ex-partner.

Her former _something_ , a bond she couldn’t quite yet get the chance to name.

She’ll never get that chance, now, surely.

Kym nudges her with a friendly elbow, and she snaps back to reality, to the cold press of her fingernails into her palms, the even colder gaze of one who was once all broad smiles and teeth staring back at her.

So she does the diplomatic thing, and holds out a hand.

It doesn’t take a trained eye to see the blood on it.

“ **It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. White.”**

And he holds out his. It doesn’t take a trained eye to see the scars on it.

“Mine too, Ms. Sinclair.”

———

He is twenty-four, face numb with practiced indifference and masking a cloak of rigid hurt, when he enters her territory, invades her home as one not wanted.

And she defends herself with ferocity and a vicious fire that rivals any assassin he ever was; he’d expected nothing less of her, after all.

She doesn’t say anything to him for the moments she takes him down to the archive room. He watches her in front of him, walking steadily, the light from the myriad windows reflecting off of her hair, casting pale pink shadows behind his eyelids. He braces himself for the onslaught at any moment, but it doesn’t come.

She’s playing a game now, too. 

He goes into the archives first, dutifully ignoring the files in favor of the table of hyacinths in the middle of the room, their lavender hue taunting, mocking him, insult upon further insult. He hears the door click.

Silence.

He holds his breath. 

She walks past him, brusque and efficient, thumbing through papers and metal cases. She still doesn’t turn to look at him.

He makes the fatal mistake that he’d thought had been beaten out of him long ago:

He lets his guard down, and turns to speak to her, a breath caught in between his lips.

And then he sees black, spots of yellow in his eyes as his head hits the bookshelves behind him, crashing to the floor with a surprising calm. Her hands are everywhere and nowhere at once, grasping his chest, his arms to keep him steady, and then, finally, they reach his neck.

“ _You—“_ she manages to croak through her hatred, teeth knitted perfectly together. He makes to give a hoarse protest, clawing at her wrists, but she doesn’t waver.

“No. Don’t even try and _speak.”_

There’s a gun barrel, now, and he can feel the urge she has to press it into his jaw and shoot.

“Listen to me.”

She finally loosens her hold, and he manages a slight, begrudging nod.

“Quite honestly—I don’t give a _damn_ what you’re doing here,” she snarls, touching him further, grasping the hem of his collar to bring her closer to him. He can smell honey and forest fires, salt and the spray of the ocean, but none of that calms him when he’s looking into the belly of the beast. 

“What _does_ matter is that you’re in _my_ territory—and you’re dangerous.” She steps back, towering over him in dark sunlight, the tip of her gun at his chin. He’s startled to taste a metallic tang in his mouth, the familiar sensation a surprise in the quiet room filled with books and his own crimes, and he reaches up to find that she’s split his lip open, the thing bleeding red down his face.

“So—“ she twirls her gun, pocketing it—”I can’t let you run amok here.”

Kieran laughs, like a match struck on sandpaper. “What are you planning with me, oh darling of mine?”

Lauren smiles, no warmth and all ice. “I’m keeping you in my line of sight.”

Then, she kicks him, right on his shin, and he bites back an uncustomary howl. Digging her heel into his leg, she leans in once more, and tugs on the ribbon in his hair.

“That’s our deal, little devil,” she whispers softly in his ear, a lover imparting sweet nothings. He closes his eyes as she sweeps his bangs behind his forehead, deceptively tender.

“Going to break me, Lauren?”

That stops her. The use of her name affects her clearly, a lance through a chest she’d thought was broken enough. She snarls, gnashing and breaking. 

“Hardly, Hyacinth.”

And right before she disappears into the light, as he’d done once long ago, eons and centuries of buildings broken, she turns back to him once more.

“Have fun, _archivist.”_

She leaves him bleeding at the lip and unsure of mind.

He’d never been able to admit to himself that he was scared of things; so he does it again, the prideful thing.

He rises once more.

He brings himself up. He breaks himself and he builds himself again. He knows, he knows, he knows.

And he laughs. 

And laughs. 

And laughs. Quiet giggles spill from his lips, hysterical, wild like a hyena. He braces himself against the bookshelf and covers his face in a hand, grasping, pulling his skin taut.

He’s not scared of her.

/

**_Never. I never want to._ **

  
  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

/

She is twenty-two, fallen back into her delusion of a good cop, when she begins the hunt.

She keeps her promise, because she’s a good bargainer, and knows the importance of deals. She keeps one eye open on him, always, because that’s the way she works. 

It’s when he talks that she begins to crack.

Kym, ever-vigilant, notices every flinch and every narrowed gaze, every time the new archivist speaks with that deep, smooth baritone, devoid of any other indication of emotion. So much so, that when she does it for the fourth time that day, Kym pulls her aside by the elbow, shoving a blueberry muffin into her unwilling hands and imploring her to eat as she chews her out.

“Lauren, _what_ is with you?”

Lauren shakes her head. **“I’m not—“**

“ _Don’t_ try it with me, Lauren!” Kym shakes her head, tapping her shoulder. “You’ve been shooting him looks that would skin him alive since he’s gotten here—and don’t think I didn’t notice when you first saw him!”

Lauren sighs. “Kym, really. I’m—“

She pouts, eyes roving over her friend’s form, tense with the fringes of exhaustion, with a critical eye. She must see the bruises—because Lauren can feel them all too well, like spiders crawling on her skin and branding her a traitor.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Okay—okay.” Lauren rubs her temples. “You want the truth?”

“That would be appreciated, dear friend.”

And so she gives her the truth. At least—some form of it.

“I— **he’s an ex of mine.”**

Kym near shouts, and Lauren claps a hand over her mouth to stifle the excited yelp that is sure to reach the devil’s sharp ear.

“Don’t scream about it, I swear! He’s—we didn’t leave off on good terms.”

“No?”

“No—I mean,” and she bites her lip, as if she’s trying to keep the fact that what she’s saying rings true to her ears inward, so she doesn’t have to acknowledge it in full.

“He was kind to me—I thought—I thought he was nice.”

“Oh? But he wasn’t?”

Lauren spares a glance over at him. His hair is in its ponytail, the irritating spectacles still perched on his nose as a woman from the precinct speaks enthusiastically to him, all clasped hands and warm blush, and she remembers a time where he’d been framed by candlelight, when he’d towered over her with a sharp grin and the glint of a knife as he’d pressed it lovingly to her throat.

_Don’t get distracted, officer._

“No.” And Lauren flicks her hair behind her decidedly.

“He turned out to be a bit of a devil.”

She bites out the truth and spits the sour taste out of her mouth.

———

He is twenty-four when he begins to learn why she’s like this.

It’s not voluntary—her captain tells him.

Kieran shuffled the Camellia’s files in his fingers, sorting them by date and pressing them into the trolley as he makes his way to the Captain’s office. He tries not to scoff at the information listed, knowing full well what’s true and what isn’t. 

He tries to not think about marching into the building with a partner, the only one he wants, and burning it to the ground like he’s always wanted to.

Instead he places the papers neatly and demurely on the Captain’s desk, and the man looks up to him in thanks. 

“How are you holding up, White?”

Kieran shrugs.

“Did someone show you around, at least?” The Captain’s voice is rough, calloused with ego, and he takes an immediate dislike to it.

“Yes.” He bows, bending slightly so his hair frames his face and covers the unease in his eyes. “Ms. Sinclair— **she was most kind.”**

“Oh _Sinclair,”_ he scoffs, waving a hand. “I’m surprised she didn’t try and show you everything in those files at once.”

Kieran raises an eyebrow as he makes to leave. It’s not his bid—not his information to know.

But the other man doesn’t seem to care—he keeps going.

“She’s an _embarrassment,_ let me tell you.”

Kieran turns. “I’m sorry, sir?”

Hermann levels him with a keen glance. “I’m sure you’ll hear eventually. She used to be a detective.”

Ah.

“But she got too obsessive—too sidetracked.” He grimaces, no doubt thinking of grey washed walls and a screaming devil, kicking her way to solace.

“I’ve seen her around with you.” He turns to him. “Try talking her out of it, no? You seem sensible enough. I’m sure she’d listen to you.”

Kieran opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

“You are dismissed.”

“Sir.”

He continues the silence as he closes the door.

He walks down the hallway, keeping his eyes trained firmly in front of him. 

When he reaches the archive room again, she surprises him, backlit in dark brown and twirling a stray lobelia in her fingertips.

“You look tense.”

He purses his lips and says nothing.

“ _And_ you took too long.” She steps forward, hand on her gun already. “What were you two talking about?”

“I’m not sure—“

“ _Anything you know, I know too.”_ She smiles, and he doesn’t like it; It’s not pinked with chill and grateful in wisps of icy fog, it’s cold for an entirely different reason.

He draws himself upwards.

He cauterizes his own wounds.

“I can get you into the Camellia, undetected.”

That stops her short. She looks at him consideringly. 

“You’ll just have to trust that I have your best intentions to heart.” He leans down, toying with a strand of auburn, like he’d done when he offered her his palms.

Silence for a few moments. Blue and gold, tulips abound.

Then, she strikes him. Sweeps his legs out from underneath him and dashes him to the floor. He barely manages to right himself again before she’s in, close, one fingertip on his collarbone and another drawing back her own shirt collar, showing him the bruises on them caked in concealer and white powder, like a proud achievement. He pales, going ashen at the ears.

She smiles at the discomfort on his face. 

“You think I can _trust_ you after this?” She asks him sweetly, all jam and sugar. She presses a finger on his own neck as she does to her little necklace, the only one he’d given her as a gift. She winces as the bruise turns a startling yellow.

The colors of demons.

“I’ll have to refuse your offer, Kieran.”

Gone again. 

The devil is left alone, without a soul to keep.

/

_I did think, once, that he was a fine dancer._

**_I was wrong._ **

  
  
  


//

  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

_/_

She is twenty-two and clad in all black when she observes the way the devil dances from the outside.

He takes the hand of a pink-haired woman in flashing orange, smiling at her with a predatory and searching gaze that makes Lauren flinch backwards, even when she’s miles away, tucked into a vent and clutching a radio frantically to her chest.

He looks so tame, so raw. He is guarded, sure, she can see that—but she doesn’t miss the way he twirls with ease, a hand in his partner’s, the glass catching reflections and dripping down his body like diamonds. It’s clear that he has the upper hand, this time. It makes sense—he’s in his own element, caught between people who are just like him, all monsters with bones in their cheeks.

But she can’t help but remember, as she moves across the vents to track him, the way he caught her hand in his, the way they sewed themselves into their own brand of evil and stayed there, made it their home.

She won’t back down. Won’t give the devil what he wants, when she knows what he wants is her.

He breaks away from the woman, his lips curving with words she can’t decipher, and moves off, blending in like a wooly lamb. She follows him with her gaze, tamping down twitches of her legs when the surge of adrenaline bursts, the urge to run in and shoot them all, but him most of all, coming down upon her like a rain of feathers and brick.

And then, he uproots her guard once again.

She can see Kieran’s eyes widen, and, to her horror, he turns his face upward into the skylights, levels his gaze right where she is crouched. She starts, and he smiles wanly and mouths words that, this time, she knows by heart.

_Hello, darling._

Dammit.

———

He is twenty-four, settled amongst his own creed, when he attempts to make amends with the one he has hurt so egregiously.

He leaves Belladonna where she stands, but not before the little viper catches his arm, whispers into his ear.

_They want for you, Hyacinth._

_Is that so?_

_But you’re too ambitious—it looks like you want something that isn’t yours._

He grits his teeth. _I take what I want._

_No. You haven’t for some time._

He knows she’s following him when he exits; he’s known the moment he could feel her presence in the gaps up above the Camellia, could smell the lingering smoke that has followed him around since he’d met her, could almost hear her yelling in his ear. But he’s almost proud of this, now, the way she keeps to the shadows to avoid him. They part for him lovingly as he walks, and walks, and walks, recognizing their master and breaking away in silent ardor.

He is the first to break the silence, because it is his thing to destroy, like all others.

“You’re not going to get anywhere doing this, officer.”

He walks on alone for a few more agonizing, peacefully bereft moments, then his other joins him in the shadows. Her face shows no emotion—it’s a blank canvas, devoid of anything he’s come to know as her instincts: fear, hurt, anger, rage. 

They come to the bridge again. Once more, as if it is made up every night, the moon lights their figures, two wraiths past their curfew.

“I know that, Hyacinth.” He turns back to her, and she draws her hood back from her face in much the same way she did so long ago, inspecting her fingernails with practiced nonchalance. He pretends not to notice the broken skin between them.

“Then what do you propose we do about that?”

She regards him.

“We’ll make a new deal, why don’t we?” She smiles, and once again he doesn’t find he enjoys it.

“That’s the game you like so much. Deals.” She draws nearer, and he feels something press against his skin, sharp and piercing his flesh underneath his dress shirt.

He smirks. “Threatening me, my good cop?”

She laughs and nods, flicking her wrist. The knife draws closer, caught in blush colored steel like her gun is. It scrapes his neck as he looks down at her balefully, eyes a horrible storm, all blue clouds and azure sky. She looks almost put out for a moment—and he knows what she must be reminded of.

“I’ll help you if you help me.” He spreads his fingers apart in supplication, proof there that there are no hidden bullets, no secrets caught between. She considers that, but it doesn’t land the way he wants it to.

“ _You’ll_ help me,” she says, “but getting something in return from me is going to be difficult.”

“What then, must I do?”

She cocks her head. “You want to know that?”

He bows a little. “Anything you ask of me, officer.”

She stares at him for what feels like millenia. The night is eerily quiet, the river babbling below the only noise in the blanket of silence. Her hair whips around her, tendrils caught in her hood, and it’s such a parallel to that first night that he half expects a gun down his throat at any moment.

Then, with a shake of her head, she throws a harried whisper in the night.

**“I need you to leave me alone.”**

He laughs, closing his eyes to hide from his view the murderous fury in her shoulders. “You don’t believe _that—”_

“Oh but I _do,_ assassin.” She grabs the collar of his own hood, pressing herself against him fully. They are chest to chest, legs bound so tightly they cannot tell where one ends and the other begins, and his breathing hitches as the knife moves further.

“You broke my trust—you broke our deal.”

“I know.”

“Then what are you trying to do?’ Her lips are a hair-breadth from his, and he tries his hardest to keep focused, on the dagger in her fingers and the promise of death, carnage in her gaze, the gaze reserved only for him.

“I’m—“

_I’m trying to save myself._

_Isn’t that what I’ve always done?_

“You’re _what?”_

He sighs, and the breath of it ghosts over her, reluctance and regret mixing in the wind.

“I’m sorry, Lauren.”

She startles, steps back. He knows she knows. She always does.

“Are you?”

He dips his head low, bangs falling over his face. “You know I am.”

She purses her lips. “I’m sorry too.”

He looks up, surprised, but she walks past him, down back into the darkness.

“I can’t accept it.”

And she leaves him alone as she always does, his own actions stunted by the past.

/

_I did it again._

_He is a terrible dancer._

  
  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

/

She is twenty-two and still filled to the brim with draining hatred when she takes him down, truly, for the first time.

She didn’t walk into the training room with the intent to take him on—it merely came about as a result of her own fury, the inhales of it suffocating as she takes to a punching bag how she once did to a target, so, so, so long ago.

When the bag’s chains creak with the weight of her repeated punches, she pushes it off of her with a frustrated groan and sits back on her heels, rolling her head. Ragged breaths fall from her lips as she reconciles her hurt.

_“Would you like something a bit more constructive to practice on?”_

She whirls around, a gasp leaving her as she notes the shrouded form leaning against the doorframe. She raises an eyebrow as Kieran steps forward, the shadows falling from him in perfect squares.

She hasn’t seen him properly in what feels like months; he’d ducked behind corners and breezed out of the openings whenever she came by, honoring her last request by the riverbank. Now, he’s here, in the night again, and she instinctively steps backwards, hands splayed.

“Are you offering?”

He bows, spreading his fingers. “If you’d like—I missed our spars, darling.”

She regards him with blank suspicion, rage once again bubbling to the surface. But somehow, after he’s gone and done everything, even managed to stay out of her way in the office like she’d asked—she can’t find that string anymore, the one to pull when she wants to be angry at him.

Instead, there is calm acceptance, cold resolve. He’s asking—he’s the one asking.

She’ll finish it here, then.

She nods. He smiles a little, but it’s terse. He must read the room--he knows what’s going to happen.

———

He is twenty-four when he surrenders himself, holds up the white flag and declares his defeat.

It is within moments that they square each other off, two dancers poised on opposite ends of the stage, toes perfectly pointed and eyes never leaving the other’s. 

She waits for him to strike first, but he won’t give her that satisfaction.

“Go on,” she urges him, and that beckoning is what severs the thread. He lunges, knife glinting, and she snarls and bears her teeth and prepares to take him down with her too.

The light above clashes, sparks flying off metal and bone as they snap and hiss and break. 

They shatter.

They break away from each other gasping, panting for breath, and fall against the rails with twin jolts of exhaustion. She’s bleeding from her wrists, her arms, the slash in the one he bandaged still throbbing with hurt. He’s worse off; his neck is cut, a lance down the jugular and leading to his collarbone, bruises on his head from where she’s slammed his head into the ground.

“Why are you _doing_ this?” She gasps, crossing her arms over herself.

There is silence for innumerable moments, and, somewhere, a clock ticks midnight, one o’clock, two. The hour approaches steadily as he looks and looks and looks, blue eyes trained on her shuddering form, something unexplainable in them. 

He feels as though he’s been trying to reach for something, to understand what it is, and never finding it until now, when he regards her with a kind of respect he has not felt in centuries.

Then, he rises steadily, on shaking knees, and draws his arms out from his sides, until his whole abdomen is unguarded. 

“You can do it.”

“What—?”

“You can hurt me.” He laughs, throwing his head back, and the stars land in his hair like stray comets. 

“You can hurt me, you know! You can break me and cut me and kill me—” he stops.

“—and I’d allow that.”

She shakes her head in incredulity. _“Why?”_ She implores, trying, searching for not only the thing that binds her to the devil but the one thing that keeps bringing her back to him. 

He matches her, his neck twisting and spilling more blood onto the mat. “I don’t know. If I did, I’d tell you—”

“—because what you know, I know.” She looks up at him from underneath her lashes. “Is that it, subordinate?”

The nickname feels good, for once. He smiles, turning his back on her. 

“Yes.”

He’s lost the game, but it doesn’t feel like that.

/

_He’s not much of a dancer—_

_But he is fair._

_I suppose that is something in itself._

  
  


//

  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

_/_

She is twenty-two when she lets him in.

They’re in the archives again, staring each other down. 

He touches the high collar of his jacket self-consciously, as if he can hide the scar from her. She knows better.

“An eye for an eye, subordinate.”

“I suppose that’s only fair.”

He thumbs the files in his hand absently, busying his fingers with something other than nervous flutters, and the show of meek docility angers her further.

“What is your goal, here?”

He looks up. “Need I have one?”

“You always do.” She walks closer. “You kill and you lie and you hurt. But this is none of those things. You—“

“I’m putting a burden on you that I shouldn’t be.” He hangs his head, averting his gaze from hers, as she moves closer still, pistol in her hands.

“Perhaps I did that first night.” He turns to her, pleading, almost morose. “I understand if you don’t want to see me anymore. I understand.”

“Do you?” And she is directly in front of him, pressed as close as she was the second night on the bridge, except this time it’s nearly wanted, something drawing her further still, into the chasm.

He will be her fall from grace, then. It is decided, in the dust of the closed off spaces they reside in.

“Do you want me to forgive you?” She asks, a lover’s whisper.

He tilts his face towards hers, lips a hair's-breadth away. “No. Not if you don’t want to.”

“Then I won’t”

And she moves forward. They are lip to lip, and he comes up in alarm to clutch at her hair, desperate, keeping her where he wants her. She grits her teeth when she pulls away, and then delves back in, opening herself for him. His hands cradle her jaw like she is the one salvation he never wants but is always tethered to, and for once she agrees with his pleas.

She rips the ribbon from his hair, lets it fall to the floor so she can thread her hands up his cheekbones and down his neck. He rips her heart from her, except he keeps holding it, keeping it to his chest and never relenting his grasp.

She’s gone and lost the game, too. 

_What am I doing?_ She asks herself.

The devil merely holds her tighter.

He asks no questions. 

———

He is twenty-four when he allows himself to fall.

He sits alone in his apartment, once again creating strokes on a canvas, bird feathers and splatters of paint.

Gold. Crimson. Charcoal.

The colors of one he’s met and mapped, known and, somehow, come to cherish.

His mind flies to the evening in the archive room, where she’d done the irreparable, made her move in the game of chess they’d played out in her office, and brought him to his knees.

He clamps a hand over his mouth, fingers ghosting over lips that had held hers too, in order to suppress a scream, suppress the memories of delicate fingers biting into skin, trailing over his biceps and staying at his neck.

_What have I done?_ He asks himself.

She merely strings him along.

She doesn’t give him an answer.

/

_I did, once._

_I’d say he is a fine dancer._

  
  
  


//

  
  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

/

She is twenty-two, born new by fire, when she makes amends with the devil she dealt with. 

They sit on a floor upon a blood-red rug, lamplight flickering in between their eyelids, and he holds his palms upward to her once again. They are bare; no scars slash down them, no rust coats them. They are the rough hands of a painter; stained in nothing but paint and scrapes of pencil lead.

“Why did you do it?” She asks of him, because she needs the answer to move forward.

He sighs, a heaving breath in moth-bitten candlelight. “Because you were right.”

“Was I?”

He tilts his head backwards, throwing himself into cast planes of shadow. 

“I am a monster. And—”

“And?”

“—I couldn’t bear the thought of you thinking I was. So I tried to break it. Whatever it was that hurt me.” He looks down at his hands, as if he’s noticing them for the first time.

“Because that’s what you do.”

“Because that’s what I do.”

She frowns. She turns her own palms up; and there she sees the scars from where she’s bitten into them with her own nails, pins on a corkboard of newspaper and red threads stitched into tissue.

“Perhaps that’s what I tried to do, too.”

He regards her with warmth, and she takes it, holds it tight and tries to reconcile with the way it makes her feel to do it.

“I told you—you can hurt me.”

She sighs.

“I don’t think that’d do anything for me now.”

“Why?”

“Because if I hurt you, I’ll hurt myself too. And—”

“And?”

“And aren’t I selfish?”

She smiles. He does too.

———

He’s twenty-five, now.

He’d never been able to give it much thought, before; but it’s always there, a dull remembrance in the mind, and he wakes the morning of with the knowledge that, for once since he’d been named a killer, he’ll go to a place where people will know, will see him and recall.

It scares him a little.

Perhaps that’s the second time, now, that he’s admitted he’s afraid of something. 

When he enters the office the Sergeant offers him a primrose, purple and pruned to near stagnant perfection, and he takes it in hesitant fingers.

“It’s your birthday, isn’t it, archivist?”

He nods solemnly. “You know?”

She shrugs. “Lauren and I were going through the employee files yesterday—it’s in there. Oh—!” And she taps him on the shoulder as she makes to leave, “Lauren has something for you!”

“Does she?”

Kym smiles. “Make amends, you two fools. Don’t think I don’t notice,” and she points two fingers at him, “all of this.”

He laughs rather nervously, and she leaves him be for now.

The angel meets him in cream and tan, red and roses. She is guarded, her face impassive, and for once he graces her with the mephistophelian curve of his lips, the dart of his gaze. 

“You have something for me, darling?”

Lauren sighs, then holds out a little box, held together by the ribbon she’d torn from him long ago.

He unwraps it as a light snow begins to fall.

Inside is a sketchbook, bound in red leather.

“You were running out, the last time I was there.” She says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “So there, subordinate.”

He looks at the thing for a long time. Then, taking the primrose still caught in his fingers, he places it where hers were moments ago, brushing against the lobe with more delicacy than he’s ever afforded himself before.

“Thank you.”

He means it.

/ 

_I have._

_He is an adequate dancer, that I have judged._

  
  


//

  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

/

She is twenty-two, and she has danced with the devil.

They’re at the ball where it all ends, where everything must come to a head for the two who decided they would break it all, and it’s surprisingly gentle, she finds, to fall backwards.

She’s in off-white, pearls dripping off her ears and silk falling over her shoulders in waves and plumes, and he once again looks at her like he doesn’t know what to do.

She smiles, and this time, she is the one that holds out her hand. Asks him a question

He takes it.

———

He is twenty-five when he falls from grace.

He’d thought it’d happened a long time ago, when he first planted a hyacinth in a pot of blood and tried to make it grow for the better part of a decade. But he supposes that it wasn’t then; it’s now, when he has to make true the human part of him that stayed inside when he toppled from the tower.

He’s in all black, collar popped and charcoal dusting his fingers. He sweeps back his hair from his eyes, coming to regard the glinting crystals set in stone and the white figure before him.

She offers him a hand. He answers her.

She leads him forward.

/

_I do know he is a fine dancer._

  
  


//

  
  


_Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?_

/

She falls with him.

He falls with her.

Still, nobody wins.

/

_Yes._

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone: we love married Lauki! So much fluff! Keep it up!  
> Me: y’all hear sumn’
> 
> *Hands you 8k+ slow burn enemies to lovers* :)
> 
> It’s said that the devil’s hour is 3 am. Work with that what you will.
> 
> Primroses are the February birth flower.
> 
> This was a stupid little idea floating around for weeks so here y’all go :) I’m sorry it got kinda weird after the spar? Idk I just wanted to press my bruises nghsgsh ;v;
> 
> (SAK (Sexy Archive Kisses) and SKA (Simp Kieran Agenda) going strong. Donate to the causes).
> 
> Comments/Kudos are blueberry muffins <3
> 
> Contact: artsofisha@gmail.com
> 
> -thumbipeach


End file.
